JULY 16, 2024 – The other day while driving from the Twin Cities up through rural Wisconsin to the Red Cabin, I was passed by a car sporting a prominent Trump sticker. On the rear bumper was another sticker with lots of bold white lettering on a bright red background. The simple Trump label was nothing to wonder about, but I was curious what the other message said. I tapped on my cruise control to add a couple of miles per hour to my speed.
On the approach into Cumberland—population 2,269—I’d nearly caught up to the Trumpmobile but not close enough to read the bumper sticker. If I kept up, I figured, then at the stop sign where U.S. Highway 63 turns left and becomes Main Street right through town, I’d have my opportunity. I stayed with the driver to ensure that I wouldn’t still be lollygagging in the 25 speed zone during the precious moment or moments when he was stopped. My plan was to trail him closely enough that I could stop immediately behind when he stopped and speed read the all-important MAGA (no doubt) message.
Everything worked out as anticipated. With both eyes wide open, I took a mental snapshot of the red and white bumper sticker just before the driver executed his turn. The message:
Unless your ruler is God, the ruler you choose will be a tyrant.
I wanted to have a conversation with the driver. Clearly he was politically aligned, and his politics, evidently, were informed by his religious beliefs, which, I inferred were some form of Christianity.
Fine—for one’s politics to be informed by one’s broader values and belief system, but along with many “radical, leftist, extremist Democrats” (so called), I’m confounded by Trump’s hold on the minds of conservative Christians. By no stretch of the evidence can Trump be accused of being devout. Over his career in presidential politics he’s made no statements and exhibited no behaviors—sincere or calculated—that suggest any degree of piety. In fact, the biggest takeaway from his hush money trial was not the guilty verdict but the in-your-face proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump’s behavior and character are magnificently contrary to Christian values. And yet . . . and yet among Trump’s closest followers and apologists are ostensibly the most strident among Christians.
On the heels of my encounter with the Unless God is your ruler [. . .] bumper sticker was the attempted assassination of Trump by a kid with an AR-15. Predictably, a number of Trump supporters saw the hand of God hard at work. It was God who had saved his . . . anointed one—though no explanation was offered for why God had sacrificed the rally attendee who was shot and killed by the same kid using the same AR-15, or why God had seen fit to put the (god)damned AR-15 into the hands of an obviously disturbed young man.
Lost in the reaction to the sobering event was any talk about imposing even the tiniest controls on the proliferation of AR-15s. Strike that. Not “lost.” Republicans, meaning Trump personality cultists, have long been opposed to meaningful gun control of any kind, including any brakes on the wide access to AR-15s. If God had intended guns to be controlled, he would have plainly said so when he handed down the Ten Commandments[1]. No need for any further “talk.”
As much as I’m confounded by Trump’s appeal among the devout, I’m far more fearful of it. If he wins the election, his theocratically minded and religiously puritanical supporters will acquire the power and license to impose their will on the rest of us. The long-standing tradition of separation of church and state—as much for the protection of established religions as for preservation of the democratic state—will be shattered.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] The nation is so “done” with gun control that even “radical, leftist, extremist Democrats” despair to the point of no longer talking about it after the latest mass shooting—or attempted assassination of a leading presidential candidate.
